


The Cop and the Kid

by Merfilly



Series: Dirty Politics [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Police, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-27 07:40:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8392954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: Rex is a good cop, and Ahsoka is a street punk. A quick sketch of what their world looks like in a series of scenes.





	

"You again, shorty?"

The brazen little punk, her skin marked out with vitiligo, hair drawn into sections and braided to hang down front and back, glared up at the cop talking.

"Free expression wall, so why are you harassing me?" she demanded.

Rex decided to intrude before it got worse; sometimes Fox pushed a little too hard. "Maybe we're just admiring your work, Tano. Good to see you working on the community project."

The kid… well, she wasn't as much a kid as she had been, and Rex worried just how she was getting by, ever since the orphanage burned down. No one had seen Father Kenobi in a couple of years. He shook himself mentally, to get back on track. Tano was looking up at him a little more respectfully. She'd bust most cops by their balls, yet she listened to him.

Probably had something to do with how many times he'd handled her deviant behavior with a talk and a trip to the diner, instead of a ride to the precinct.

"Not letting them other punks dirty up the wall without making it clear I am here," she said. "Ain't y'all got people to harass that might, ya know, be breaking the law?"

"You're right. Come on, Fox," Rex coaxed, getting the hostile officer out of the vicinity of the volatile street kid. The last thing he needed was to have to cold-cock a fellow officer, and he was going to if Fox stayed near Tano much longer.

+++

Rex finished up his shift and headed down to his car. His instincts started screaming at him before he got there, and he was on hyper-vigilant alert. As he cleared the bumper in his line of sight, he saw the body by the front tires… and recognized it as the tough little street artist that had wormed into his heart a few years back. Keeping his guard up, he moved to where he could check for a pulse, eyes scanning for the perp.

The pulse was there, stronger than he'd hoped, and he didn't spot any blood.

Taking the kid to the hospital was the last thing he could do, though, given that it would just get her thrown into the system, probably in a group home, given she did have a record. With a gentleness that few who had seen him work might suspect, he managed to put her in the back of the car, and then he took her home.

+++

"So who did it?"

Tano was glaring at him, but at least she'd taken him up on the offer of a shower and the loan of his sweats and a tee, even if they were swallowing her whole.

"Look, Rexter, don't put yourself in the middle of it," she said, a bit of patronizing anger in her voice, but when Rex looked her way, he could have sworn he saw concern, maybe fear, in her eyes.

"Aren't you all about personal freedom, kid? Where's my freedom to choose?"

Tano gave a short bark of laughter, even as she reached up to play with the end of a braid in a nervous motion. "Old man, you work for it. Leave it alone, or you'll lose everything too."

Rex froze, as her words brought to mind that the orphanage fire had never been cleared off the old files, but they'd been told to drop it. There'd been shuffling of personnel, and sometimes Rex felt like he'd been left in place solely to throw off some kind of suspicion. 

And Skywalker's sudden rise to Commissioner had been startling, right on the heels of Palpatine taking the city manager position.

"Ahsoka," he said, using her first name on purpose, watching as her eyes snapped to his. "I'm not blind. And you had to have a reason to come to my car, as bad as you'd been beaten. So if you trusted me for help… why not trust me to help you fight the corruption choking our city?"

"Don't want to get you killed, Rex… only damned person that's ever given a damn about me and meant it," she said.

Killed. And those eyes… they knew pieces of what he'd only barely begun to touch.

"Let me keep me alive, and you? Accept my offer to beat this back. Because I need to know where to shoot if you ever wind up in the morgue, kid, and that's where you're headed, if you're doing what I think you are."

She thought it over, making a call in her own head, and then straightened as much as she could with her injuries. "You're right. I trust you. And all I really want is to break this thing, before it hurts anyone else. So yeah… if you want the risk, I'll start filling you in."

"We'll take the risks together."

"Together."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] The Cop and the Kid](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15516312) by [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




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